'Death Takes A Holiday' at Charing Cross Theatre

Charing Cross Theatre is getting a good reputation for putting on rarely produced musicals such as the excellent 'Titanic' and 'Ragtime' last year. It opens the New Year with the European premier of 'Death Takes a Holiday' by Maury Yeston who also wrote 'Titanic' and co-wrote the marvellous 'Grand Hotel'. I've never heard of 'Death Takes a Holiday' but it's previously been a film and a play and who knows what else because of it's intriguing premise.

The core of the story is a figurative Death who takes a weekend off so no-one in the world dies. He's weary after collecting so many souls during the First World War. Simple, isn't it? Or is it? What happens when Death becomes human to experience emotions for the first time, maybe to even fall in love, to feel passion and power? Who knows what might happen.

The play opens with the Duke's family and houseguests driving home from an evening in Venice to celebrate his daughter's engagement to her long-time fiancee who is driving. He crashes and she is thrown from the car, surely to be killed, but we find her in Death's arms in the mist and he chooses not to take her. He decides to take human form and visits her father, the Duke, to say he'll be turning up as a guest for the weekend and, if he says anything to the other guests, there'll be repercussions. Death then vanishes to change out of his black suit and short to appear again in a black suit and white shirt (a potential major transformation scene missed) with a suitcase to denote his 'guest' status.

I think it's these introductory scenes that helped to fix my view of this production and, in my view, what it lacks. Zoe Doano played Grazia, the Duke's daughter, and she was nice enough but her voice wasn't powerful enough and at times I couldn't hear her over the music - is that a sound problem or is she simply not projecting? Chris Peluso played Death in a really strange, muted way, quite wooden as a central character. I know he can do better since I saw him in 'Showboat' last year but he seems to have forgotten how to act and, in particular, what to do with his arms that hung like useless pieces of wood for a lot of the show, including the bows at the end.

I hate to be critical like this since everyone has obviously put a lot of work into the show - and this might've just been an off-night - but if the central characters don't engage you then the show's lost. It also felt like a few of the songs needed a bit more oomph, whether that's an edit of the songs or in how they were delivered I'm not sure. I can't actually remember any of them as I type this. I suspect the show needs a bit of judicious editing before it's put on again.

I love the premise behind this show and it's a great subject for a musical. I'm also very pleased that Charing Cross Theatre has put it on - shows need an audience - but not all shows are going to excel. 'Titanic' and 'Ragtime' were excellent but this falls below their standard. Sorry people, but, although I'm pleased I saw it, this production didn't work for me.

'Titanic' at the Southwark Playhouse

Last Friday Chris took me to see 'Titanic' the Maury Yeston musical from the late '90s that has never been staged in London before. It was first produced in New York nine months before the film of the same name was released and tells the stories of some of the real people on the ship and what happened to them.

We see the first class millionaires going aboard and returning to their lives in America, the second class wannabes from both sides of the Atlantic and the third class emigrants seeking a new life in the new world. And, of course, the ships' crew. Most of the actors played multiple roles and it was confusing at first to see the same person walk on as a first class passenger in one costume and, a few minutes later, as a third class one in a different costume, but it soon settled down. It seemed to work out fine.

Their personal tales start unfolding like the boiler-room engineer proposing to his girlfriend through the telegraph and young Kate from Ireland who's found herself in the family way and heads to America to start a new life. None of the first class passengers get any real characterisation, it's the second and third class folks we get to know. And the thing is that we know what's going to happen and they don't, but we don't know if the individuals will live or die, and that's what keeps the dramatic tension going.

There's a great score to the play, with most of the tale being told through songs. The show opens with songs about the magnificence of the ship, it's size and the amount of food going aboard to feed the passengers over the week to reach New York. They move onto songs about the passengers and their hopes and dreams and then songs about what happens to the ship.

My favourite was 'Lady's Maid', a song started by Kate who wants to be a lady's maid, another Kate who wants to be a seamstress and other characters wanting to be an engineer or a constable or, in one case, a millionaire. That song really touched me with the bright hopes of ordinary people taking their lives in their hands to travel to the other side of the world in search of a better life and yet their dreams are so mundane, wanting to be a servant or open a shop. It's a song about the human spirit and makes me wonder where people in this century will head to now that the great centuries long migration west has ended?

It's a musical that stimulates big thoughts and questions as well as telling a narrative of a story we're all familiar with.

The theatre is a bit of an oddity, with unallocated seating meaning that everyone queues up at the door beside the bar to get in, not a good start to the evening. We then walk past the designer of the Titanic sitting at a desk to get to our seats, with banks of seats on three sides of the stage. I know you're an 'alternative' theatre but allocated seating solves so many problems for us punters.

The sound wasn't terribly good when I saw it. The actors were all mic'd but, when they sang away from me, I had difficulty making out what they were singing. That wasn't really helped by some actors hitting all the right notes in the right order at the right time but forgetting about their diction so I couldn't make out what they were saying (yes, Greg Castliglioni, I'm talking to you here).

We were lucky enough to be there on a night when Maury Yeston gave a talk after the show and the sound problems continued. He seemed to be talking to one side of the audience only and wasn't mic'd so I missed a lot of what he said, but it was good to see him anyway. He co-wrote one of my favourite musicals, 'Grand Hotel', that is rarely played and it was nice to hear him refer to it.

All in all, I'm thinking of going back to see it again ...